Operation Featherweight: Month 7, Week 5, Day 1.

As I've already mentioned at roughly this time two weeks ago the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched a successful operation to capture the town of al-Baghdadi in Anbar province which sits around 195km (117 miles) to the west of Iraq's capital Baghdad.

ISIL then used the capture of al-Baghdadi to launch an unsuccessfully attack against the Ain al-Asad airbase which sits just 5km (3miles) to the south and is home to some 300 US Marines.

ISIL followed up the capture of al-Baghdadi by burning alive 47 Sunni tribesmen who had attempted to defend the town and kidnapping and killing Sheikh Qassem Sweidan al-Janabi - a senior Sunni tribal leader. Sheikh Janabi's nephew Zeid al-Janabi (an Iraqi MP) was also kidnapped in the attack was dumped, alive in the overwhelmingly Shia "Sadr City" district of Baghdad.

This is a tactic that is common amongst Mexican drug cartels and is known as "heating up the ground." Essentially a cartel will carry out an atrocity (they're also quite big into beheading) and then dump the bodies in their territory of their rivals in the hope the authorities will blame the rivals for the attack.

There have also been fresh waves of suicide bombings across Baghdad.

This has all been done as part of an ISIL strategy to intimidate the Sunni tribes that dominate Anbar province into thinking that the Iraqi government cannot defend them against ISIL. Therefore the Sunni tribes had better switch allegiance to ISIL giving the group a clear run at Iraq's capital and the oil-rich Basra province in the south-east. Unfortunately the murder of Sheikh Janabi did succeed in getting Sunni MP's to withdraw from Iraq's Parliament.

Sadly US President Barack Obama is still adamant that an "inclusive" Iraqi government is a pre-condition to fighting ISIL which obviously encourages ISIL to employ these tactics.

As a result it has become a priority that ISIL are forced back in Anbar province in order to re-assure the Sunni tribes that they're on the winning side in order to prevent the Iraqi government and therefore the entire nation collapsing.

Over the course of the past week the Iraq Security Forces (ISF) have been conducting an operation to liberate al-Baghdadi from ISIL. For the most part this has been hugely successful with the ISF marching into large sections of the town almost completely unopposed.

However today ISIL have succeeded in capturing a key bridge across the Euphrates river between al-Baghdadi and the larger town of Haditha which indicates they may be prepared to give up al-Baghdadi in favour of a larger prize in the form of the strategically important Haditha Dam.

It almost goes without saying that throughout this operation the ISF have received next to no support from the US-led coalition.

While everybody was becoming increasingly concerned about the situation in Anbar the US last Thursday (19/2/15) took the highly unusual step of announcing their plan to liberate Iraq's second city Mosul. Not only did the US reveal that they are planning this operation for April/May they also detailed which units of the ISF and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga would take part and exactly what role each unit would play.

In preparation for the D-Day invasion during World War Two the allies conducted a year long operation codenamed "Operation Bodyguard" which involved placing famous US General George S. Patton in charge of an entirely false army in Kent, UK. This was done to convince the Nazis that they would be attacked at Calais, France when in fact they were attacked in Normandy.

As a result the only possible explanation I could think of why the US would release such a detailed plan for Mosul is that it was a mis-direct and they were really going to attack in a completely different way in the coming days.

A week on from the Mosul announcement with no surprise operation being launched it has become clear that the US' real reason for releasing so much information was far more petulant.

Amid negotiations between the US and the Iraqis and most of the rest of the coalition Mosul has very much become a symbol of the US' reluctance to do anything that may result in ISIL actually losing this war.

For example at a summit in London on January 22nd (22/1/15) Iraq leaked the fact that around 20% of ISIL fighters had already been killed. They then went on to claim that an operation to liberate Mosul could begin in weeks rather then the year that the US was predicting. This obviously prompted a furious response from the US but did allow the European members of the coalition to step up their air-support leading to the liberation of Tal Afar two days later.

As such the US' release of the Mosul plan seems to have been an attempt to deflect pressure on them to fight ISIL in any way, shape or form. In the first instance the release of the plan has automatically made any operation immensely more difficult by telling ISIL what to expect. Revealing the plan also places a very public time-frame on the Iraqis to be ready for the operation. At the same time behind the scenes the US is continuing to refuse to deliver weapons and equipment that has already been paid for to the Iraqis.

Therefore the US seems to be trying to engineer a situation where they can turn around to the Iraqis and say; "Well we had an operation planned but you couldn't meet the deadline. Now shut up about trying to liberate your country!"

It must be said though that I've always thought that although its symbolism is powerful what will be an extremely brutal operation to liberate Mosul doesn't make a huge amount of strategic sense when ISIL are almost at the gates of Baghdad. Sadly though I suspect that Obama will also try and find away to screw up any attempt to solve that problem because he's become obsessed with his legacy.

First Obama thought he was going to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict but that didn't happen. Then Obama thought he was going to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that clearly hasn't happened. So Obama has now become obsessed with Iran's nuclear program and displaying the sort of judgement that led to his failure in the other two objectives sees ISIL as an important ally to place pressure on Iran during those negotiations.

At 18:30 on 26/2/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 20:10 on 26/2/15 (UK date) to tidy the above and add;

While Obama's been dreaming of all the Oscars that the Selma-style film of his life is going to win the US Department of Homeland Security that Obama would rather see shut down then revoke what he himself admits are unlawful executive actions on immigration have been dealing with a rash of ISIL inspired terrorist threats against the US.

The first of these came on Sunday (22/2/15) when what I consider the new al-Shabaab  released an Internet video encouraging their supporters to attack soft targets such as Oxford Street shopping district in London, UK and the Mall of America in Minnesota, US.

Rather then being evidence of co-ordinated al-Shabaab networks poised to attack the west this was more of a desperate plea for self-radicalised lone-wolves to try something. In fact my first reaction was to wonder if there was yet another stabbing on Oxford Street would we in the UK realise that it had been a terror attack. However with its gun culture this is obviously a much more substantial threat in the US.

On Wednesday (25/2/15) the FBI confirmed that they had arrested three men in Brooklyn, New York City who had been planning to travel to fight alongside ISIL. Failing that they were prepared to carry out terror attacks within the US including possibly assassinating Obama himself.

At the risk of going off on a bit of a tangent the three men are natives of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Along with Dagestan and Chechnya these nations that sit on Russia's southern border have recently seen a massive increase in Islamist terrorism and have provided many fighters in the Battle of Kobane and the bombers who attacked Volgograd, Russia in the run-up to the Sochi Olympics.

However Wednesday's arrests do seem to be legitimate and indicate nothing other then the fact that since the war against ISIL began seven months ago the US authorities have been forced to identify and disrupt an increasing number of these terror plots. On 9/11 America learnt what happens if they screw up just once.

As such it should hardly come as a surprise that overnight the embargo was lifted and the US' flagship Washington Post newspaper was finally able to report the identity of ISIL's self-styled executioner-in-chief who up until now has been known as "Jihadi John."

This has been something of an open secret pretty much since he first emerged. Therefore while I wasn't aware of the specific name I was aware that he was part of a London, UK based network that is linked to the new al-Shabaab in Somalia and therefore by extension to ISIL in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Another member of this network famously escaped from the authorities while I was having my own legal problems back in 2013. That should tell you all you need to know about the network's relationship with the UK intelligence services.

The revelation that Jihadi John is in fact Mohammed Emwazi, a 27 year old UK/Kuwaiti dual national comprehensively destroys Obama's position that ISIL fighters are poor individuals lacking in economic and social opportunity who have become radicalised by the US' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel's 'genocide' in Palestine or Syrian President Assad's 'genocide.' Emwazi in fact graduated with a degree in computer science from Westminster University. Along with Oxford and Cambridge this is considered one of the UK's best universities and in a trivial point one which actually rejected me.

Emwazi is also very closely linked with an *ahem* Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) called CAGE UK. Officially CAGE is a campaign group set up to protest the US' Guantanamo Bay prison. As Obama has made the closure of Guantanamo Bay a cornerstone of his legacy it has obviously proved all too easy for him to believe that line.

However if you look more closely Emwazi first became associated with CAGE in 2009 when he was prevented from travelling to Tanzania to meet with Bilal Berjawi who was later killed in a Drone strike on a al-Shabaab training camp in Somalia. Since then CAGE have been assisting Emwazi in challenging restrictions on his travel by both the UK authorities and Kuwait who made it quite clear in 2013 that they did not want him in their country under any circumstance. It is then understood that CAGE instructed Emwazi to change his name allowing him to slip into Syria via Turkey.

As such it's well recognised within the relevant circles that CAGE don't give a damn about Guantanamo Bay and instead are part of the pipeline that European intelligence agencies have set up to transport jihadists to fight for ISIL against the Syrian government. In fact you could say that CAGE are the UK ticket office for what has become known as the "Garbage Truck Express" after its founder - Glasgow bin Lorry.

This is of course the pipeline that Obama wants to keep open in order to funnel more US trained and equipped jihadists into Syria.

I must say that the UK doesn't seem best pleased about the public un-masking of Jihadi John because while Obama may still be on planet Zog European nations have been discreetly trying to wind down groups like CAGE.

In his press conference this afternoon CAGE director Asim Qureshi had a look about him with which I've become very familiar. It's the look of someone linked to the intelligence services who has realised that they've been caught doing something very illegal but aren't worried because they are confident that the Crown will protect them at all costs.

In an interview on the evening news Qureshi was developing the look of a man who is beginning to realise that he is in very serious trouble but is confident he has enough dirt to blackmail the intelligence services with should they ever put him on trial. Due to his new found notoriety lots of journalists now know to look out for that trial should it ever happen.

21:25 on 26/2/15 (UK date).